Funding Societies, Singapore’s and Southeast Asia’s leading SME crowdfunding platform, has announced the launch of its chatbot Miyu on its website (fundingsocieties.com). This is the first such chatbot created by a crowdfunding company in Southeast Asia. Interestingly, Miyu was jointly developed by two Singapore Management University interns at Funding Societies along with bot platforms meya.ai and api.ai, using machine learning, and natural language processing.
While a live chat is already available during the usual working hours, Miyu works round the clock to answer queries that a business owner may ask about the loan products offered by Funding Societies. By engaging in an interactive and light-hearted way, Funding Societies aims to increase the awareness and confidence of peer-to-peer lending amongst SMEs, thereby helping them reach their business goals through alternative finance.
Where speed is key for small businesses, some business owners could spend a good amount of time but still do not secure sufficient financial assistance from traditional financial institutions. Through Miyu, business owners get 24/7 support to questions on financing, saving them time for other business priorities. Funding Societies’ online document collection and tech driven credit processes ensure that the end-to-end process from application to disbursal is just 5-7 days, compared to a much longer time needed by traditional financial institutions.
Funding Societies believes in empowering SMEs for a stronger economy, which is encapsulated in their motto of Stronger SMEs, Stronger Societies. Funding Societies was awarded the MAS Fintech Award (in Nov 2016) in the SME Category by the regulator themselves. Kelvin Teo, co-founder and CEO of Funding Societies shared, "Since inception, we've promised to help SMEs and investors through crowdfunding and innovation. Our chatbot is another step in innovation and aims to deliver almost human-like customer experience 24/7.”
Funding Societies was the winner of the Fintech Award in SME category given by Monetary Authority of SIngapore (November 2016) and named 2017’s No. 1 Hottest Startup in Singapore by Singapore Business Review. It was also recently recognised as the Best in Customer Experience for Alternative Financial Services in Asia by Retail Banker International, was also as well as one of the Top 250 FinTech companies globally by CB Insights.
The future plans for Miyu include acting as a Virtual Relationship Manager who can assist SMEs in loan application with minimal human intervention or link them up with account managers. It will also help investors navigate through the platform, initiate video chats with real customer experience managers as well as perform account opening and management activities such as investments, deposits, withdrawals, etc. without human intervention at any time of the day.
